A variety of medical devices and medical device systems may be implanted within a body of a patient to provide support to a portion or portions of the patient's body. For example, some medical devices may be implanted and coupled to backbones or portions of a spine of a patient and may be configured to provide support to the spinal bone structure of the patient.
Typically, weaknesses in the spine are corrected using devices that fuse one or more vertebrae together. It may be desirable to have an implantable device that provides for structural stability to adjacent vertebrae and to achieve supplemental fusion to treat weaknesses in the spine due to degenerative disc disease, spondylolisthesis, trauma (i.e., fracture or dislocation), tumor and/or other causes.